"I remember a group of children who came down the block, both black and white. They were pretending they were soldiers in World War II. Suddenly they began making me a target, assuming that I was Japanese.

Saul came along and chased them off; but I realized that I was the neighborhood’s all-purpose Asian. I could have also been the Korean- or Chinese-Communist who got killed, depending upon what war they were pretending to fight. It made me feel like an outsider more than ever in my own neighborhood. It was like suddenly finding that the different pieces of a jigsaw puzzle no longer fit together."